I saw this fascinating decision making process showcased in an article on
searchHP where a decision maker for the town of Aurora, CO was trying to
decide between HP or Compaq storage product:

<Extract>
"They've put us in a severe bind," Johnson said. "Our concern is that we
don't want HP to 'end-life' it after the merger. HP has a history of that
with the HP3000 line. We don't want it if we're going to invest all that
money and they end the line."

What made Johnson even more leery of going with HP for this purchase was
that the company would not give him a suitable guarantee. "They're offering
us no guarantees, only one year from point-of-purchase, not even from the
merger date. We became leery and started looking at Compaq. They were
willing to give us a guarantee in writing that they were moving forward
with the product and they had no plans to get rid of this. Compaq wanted to
work with us."
<End extract>

What fascinated me was that this user seemed to think that a "guarantee"
from a pre-merged Compaq would carry more weight than no Guarantee from a
pre-merged HP.  Wouldn't it seem obvious that all bets are off after the
merger and that such "guarantees" are not guaranteed by new management?

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